" I keep all her scoldings. She taught me singing once, and has taught me living ever since. You would like her. She is an embodied repose — half a lifetime wiser than I, but only six years older." ***** " Is it not a shame for Gladstone[1] to have been used so, set up as a brilliant mark for the daws to peck at ? Let them peck ! they are but daws after all ; and the eagle wounded, is an eagle still. Only, this our England has not progressed so rapidly of late years, that we can contentedly see her drawn back because the leader is too much of a Pegasus. Well, happily, I have no business with politics. There is a certain sense of snugness in absolute insignificance. Also, it is going to rain, and I am always good when it rains. There is such a curious lullaby in the sweet pure rush of water, cleansing away foulnesses and dust, like a heavenly air blowing through our error and strife." ***** "The grain of the Deity that is within us makes it impossible for us to conceive a nature beyond man as other than a nobler man. We instinctively give the Almighty a worthy foe, but I think we are wrong. I believe Satan is the meanest spirit in creation ; that it is a significant truth which places hell down in the depths — that 'without are dogs.' " ***** "It is a flaw — I am afraid a fatal flaw in me— that I cannot do any good by taking pains, any more than a tree can try to grow: only the Great Master is a perfect gardener. If He means to make me a i goodly plant ' He will do it ; if not, the place I long for some one else will fill. There are no empty niches in creation, and there is room for unfinished souls in heaven." *****
- ↑ Written after the Oxford Election of 1865.
